Ajax coach Frank de Boer admitted he was annoyed at his players after Tuesday’s 3-1 defeat to Barcelona in the Champions League.
- By Michael Bell
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Barcelona raced into a 2-0 lead in the opening twenty minutes, and would have been further ahead by the break if not for some poor finishing. De Boer admitted he was angry that his players showed the Spanish giants so much respect.
De Boer said after the game, “I’m annoyed because we wanted a better result and it didn’t turn out that way, although we improved during the second half,”
“During the break I told my players that if we scored a goal then anything could happen, and that’s what we saw towards the end.
“That’s the attitude I want to see from them, not the one they showed in the first half.
“We gave them too much respect. Sometimes you have to play like your opponents and we have players who can do very well when they have possession of the ball.
“Their first goal was great, but the second was our fault.”
Last season Barcelona beat Ajax 4-0 in the Nou camp in the same stage of the competition, and De Boer thought his players played better on that night than they did on Tuesday.
The former Barcelona player added, “Last year we did better than this. We had the ball longer than them. This time it looked as if my full-backs hadn’t played,”
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